Biographies

William Albert Setchell (1864–1943), was the first phycologist at UC Berkeley and the first chair of the Botany Department. He was active from 1895, when he arrived at UC Berkeley from Yale, to 1934, when he retired, and subsequently to just before his death. His phycological interests were broad: kelps, thermophilic (hot springs) algae, global algal distribution, and the marine flora of the central and northeastern Pacific, including Mexico, California and Alaska. He branched out from phycology to mycology (hypogeous fungi), ethnobotany (tobacco), parasitic plants, and seagrasses. Hallmarks of his career were the understanding of the importance of type specimens and establishing communication with phycologists worldwide. His correspondence, notebooks, and other papers are stored in the Herbarium archives. His extensive phycological library is now stored in the Silva Center for Phycological Documentation.
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George Frederik Papenfuss (1903–1981), the second curator of algae, had, like Setchell before him, a global vision. A South African, he studied successively at the University of North Carolina, Johns Hopkins University, and the University at Lund, Sweden, where he worked with Nils Svedelius and Harald Kylin, pre-eminent phycologists of the day. He began his career at UC Berkeley in 1942, focusing on marine algae, especially Rhodophyta and the flora of South Africa. He mentored 17 PhD students, many of whom went on to distinguished careers, corresponded widely and participated in international societies and expeditions to the Red Sea and the coast of Eastern Africa. He imbued his students with the necessity of consulting primary literature and type specimens, and his research and that of his students is noteworthy for meticulous attention to historical detail. He used the bibliographic resources of the herbarium to assemble catalogs of marine algae of Antarctica and of the Red Sea. His archives are in the Silva Center, but are largely uncurated.
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Paul Claude Silva (1922–2014) came to UC Berkeley as a PhD student in 1948, having earned a Masters degree at Stanford. His career coincided with the flourishing of phycology during the second half of the 20th century and encompassed teaching, research, communication, outreach, and development of nomenclatural standards. His work focused on botanical (especially phycological) nomenclature, monographs of the green algal genus Codium, preparation of catalogs, compilation of information for encyclopedias, and production of floras. Dedicated to the importance of international cooperation and collaboration in science, he was instrumental in the founding of the International Phycological Society. He served as chairman of the organizing committee and communicated with phycologists worldwide to gain support. He edited Phycologia, the Society's journal, for its first seven years and was elected president of the society in 1965. His service to the International Association for Plant Taxonomy was equally long-standing and valuable. He served as secretary and chairman of the Committee for Algae beginning in 1954 and became a member of the Editorial Committee in 1981. His name appears in the editorship of five successive Codes of Botanical Nomenclature. His first published paper, addressing algal generic names proposed for conservation, was followed by many other papers proposing clarifications and refinements to the Code. He was active in the American Phycological Society and the California Botanical Society and served on the editorial boards of many phycological journals. Silva's major contribution to phycology was the Index Nominum Algarum, a comprehensive index of all algal names. This project was conceived to address the inadequacy of De Toni's Sylloge Algarum, a monumental but incomplete and out-of-date work encompassing both taxonomy and nomenclature. The INA contains information pertaining to names and their typification, history, and publication. The University library, developed in part by Setchell, and the actively growing Silva library of books and reprints facilitated the INA. As the it became more complete, the INA served catalogers and monographers locally and globally and enabled Silva to contribute extensively to important taxonomic reference works such as the Index Nominum Genericorum, Authors of Plant Names, and Names in Current Use. Catalogs on Indian Ocean algae, Philippine marine algae, and the genus Scenedesmus, coauthored by Silva, were possible only because of the INA. The INA, which is still actively curated, became available online in 1998, and was crucial to the development of AlgaeBase, the popular phycological website. Silva's archives include voluminous correspondence concerning every aspect of phycology and botanical nomenclature.
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